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Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

nytimes.com

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Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#161

Post by aedron »

discombobulate wrote: post #155
dcw303 wrote: post #7

We're a long way off mainstream. Take the Web as an example: When my university lab computer got trumpet winsock and Netscape installed, it wasn't mainstream. When Hotbot was launched and could actually search with some degree of efficiency it wasn't mainstream. When I learned html and javascript from reading Webmonkey posts it wasn't mainstream. When I switched to this new upstart called Google it wasn't mainstream.…

> When I switched to this new upstart called Google it wasn't mainstream. It was in schools by that time. Youngsters could well embrace crypto long before the rest of the normies. I would have loved it when I was a kid. Anyone got kidos who grind crypto? If you're reading the nytimes for crypto, then you're behind the curve. Bigly. Digital coins. Fucking morons. & if you're reading the nytimes for crypto investment a…

> Anyone got kidos who grind crypto?

I just overheard my kid's friend talking about how you buy everything you want on "the dark web" using bitcoin to pay for it.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#162

Post by discombobulate »

aedron wrote: post #161
discombobulate wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I switched to this new upstart called Google it wasn't mainstream. It was in schools by that time. Youngsters could well embrace crypto long before the rest of the normies. I would have loved it when I was a kid. Anyone got kidos who grind crypto? If you're reading the nytimes for crypto, then you're behind the curve. Bigly. Digital coins. Fucking morons. & if you're reading the nytimes for crypto investment a…

> Anyone got kidos who grind crypto? I just overheard my kid's friend talking about how you buy everything you want on "the dark web" using bitcoin to pay for it.

That's obviously bad. But kids have always bought drugs.

That is an example of how kidos can create their own economies with crypto. Money is something everyone understands. Even penguins & chimps understand trade (for sex, with the link provided)[0].

If there's a way to ensure children didn't have access to drugs of abuse, I'm all for that. Drugs & developing brains !mix. & it seems prohibition hasn't helped any. It's spawned more concentrated substances & resilient drug markets.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_among_animals

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#163

Post by redcalx »

neilwilson wrote: post #111
jknz wrote: post #68

Bitcoin seems quite straightforward and easy to understand, compared to our current banking system. A lot of comments mention the difficulty of explaining what is bitcoin and how it works, and that mainstream people cannot get enough understanding to start using it. What about the actual banking system? There are so much mainstream ignorance about our current banking system. What does it even mean that I own $2000 at…

It means exactly the same as bitcoins. You have an entry on some computers somewhere. The difference is that the entry on a regulated bank's computer can be used to settle a tax bill, or a loan. The entry in a blockchain can do neither. So at some point you have get the right sort of money to settle debts imposed on you by wider society. Blockchain 'currencies' are just intangible bottles of wine, artworks, or tulip…

You can't settle a tax bill with gold either.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#164

Post by rubidium »

coldtea wrote: post #126
bdamm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mom is an outlier.

Not really. Don't know when you lads/lasses were born, but the Web was already mainstream, with everybody and their dog getting on it, on 1998-9 or so. It didn't have to wait until Facebook.

In the US, 30% adoption by 1998, 50% adoption by 2000. But much higher rates of adoption for the wealthier households and much lower for the poorer.

So depends on your economic state then.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#165

Post by davidgerard »

mrb wrote: post #30
CPLX wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with Google your Mom can find out when the store is open and where it is. Facebook lets grandparents see photos of grandchildren. Reading a blog replaces reading the gossip column in the daily paper. You could finally buy plane tickets without driving somewhere. And so on. The early web was really fucking useful as it started to mature. It solved a lot of real problems. What is cryptocurrency going to help these…

" What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today? " International payments confirmed and spendable in minutes not days. Escaping inflation in Venezuela/Argentina/whoeverisnext. Sending remittance to family overseas without 10% wasted in fees. Receiving monetary donations for organizations that might be victim of oppressive censorship. Participating in modern e-commerce for the u…

>International payments confirmed and spendable in minutes not days.

Unless bitcoin transactions are clogged this week, and ignoring its extreme volatility and difficulties in conversion at both ends.

> Escaping inflation in Venezuela/Argentina/whoeverisnext.

The Venezuela case is made-up BS, and the same for slotting in some other country. Worked example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14552819

> Sending remittance to family overseas without 10% wasted in fees.

Instead, they lose it in volatility and delays, and the difficulties cashing out at the other end - the latter was so bad for rebit.ph that they literally had to start an exchange just to have enough pesos on hand.

You're reciting cut'n'paste talking points that are largely refuted, like a Gish gallop in a single paragraph. This is not good argumentation.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#166

Post by davidgerard »

mrb wrote: post #110
legulere wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> International payments When was the last time you made an international payment? I never made a payment outside of the EU and inside the EU I already have free wire transfers. For most people this is not interesting. > unbanked/underbanked You have the right to a bank account in the EU. > Allowing merchants to save 2% in credit card fees Currently Bitcoin is more expensive for typical transactions. And there's dire…

" When was the last time you made an international payment? " I love that you asked this question! The very reason it doesn't happen often is because of friction inherent to legacy payment systems. Cryptocurrencies remove this friction in cross-border trade, hence are making such transactions more commonplace. It's like you saying in 1890 "Why buy cars? People don't travel that much." But the invention of cars is pre…

> What about the rest of the world? 6.6B humans?

“Banking the unbanked” is much discussed in international development circles. Around 2013, Bitcoin advocates started claiming that Bitcoin could help with this problem. Unfortunately:

* The actual problems that leave people unbanked are the bank being too far away, or bureaucratic barriers to setting up an account when you get there.

* Unless they use an exchange (which would functionally be a bank), they’d need an expensive computer and a reliable Internet connection to hold and update 120 gigabytes of blockchain.

* Bitcoin is way too volatile to be a reliable store of value.

* How do they convert it into local money they can spend? Pretty much nobody accepts bitcoin.

* 7 transactions per second worldwide total means Bitcoin couldn’t cope with just the banked, let alone the unbanked as well.

* A centralised service similar to M-Pesa (a very popular Kenyan money transfer and finance service for mobile phones) might work, but M-Pesa exists, works and is trusted by its users – and goes a long way toward solving the problems with access to banking that Bitcoin claims to.

Advocates will nevertheless say “but what about the unbanked?” as if Bitcoin is an obvious slam-dunk answer to the problem and nothing else needs to be said. But no viable mechanism to achieve this has ever been put forward.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#167

Post by codingmyway »

If nothing else, cryptocurrency might do one thing that is needed, if only roughly and imperfectly, and is to distribute wealth from the the old to the young.

It's the one counterbalance to the debt based asset bubbles of the last 40 years that have transferred wealth to pensioners at the expense of the young

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#168

Post by brooklyntribe »

Swizec wrote: post #26
CPLX wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with Google your Mom can find out when the store is open and where it is. Facebook lets grandparents see photos of grandchildren. Reading a blog replaces reading the gossip column in the daily paper. You could finally buy plane tickets without driving somewhere. And so on. The early web was really fucking useful as it started to mature. It solved a lot of real problems. What is cryptocurrency going to help these…

> What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today? "I want to play investor and get filthy rich but don't have enough money to be an accredited investor, playing stocks feels too hard, and angel investing seems too risky." It's solving that problem.

Playing stocks is hard?

!. Open a robinhood account. 2. By AMZN.

Come back in a year. Double your cash.

The problem is, that's so boring! :-)

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#169

Post by slice_of_life »

mrb wrote: post #30
CPLX wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with Google your Mom can find out when the store is open and where it is. Facebook lets grandparents see photos of grandchildren. Reading a blog replaces reading the gossip column in the daily paper. You could finally buy plane tickets without driving somewhere. And so on. The early web was really fucking useful as it started to mature. It solved a lot of real problems. What is cryptocurrency going to help these…

" What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today? " International payments confirmed and spendable in minutes not days. Escaping inflation in Venezuela/Argentina/whoeverisnext. Sending remittance to family overseas without 10% wasted in fees. Receiving monetary donations for organizations that might be victim of oppressive censorship. Participating in modern e-commerce for the u…

I love cryptocurrency Goolybib Founder Voice

But could you expound on this part here

> Participating in modern e-commerce for the unbanked/underbanked

From my experience, the unbanked hardly have a chance to own cryptocurrency because they don't even have internet. In my country, MPesa is pretty much ubiquitous and that is because it doesn't need the internet to work.

Are there any ideas on how to overly SMS functionality over cryptocurrency in order to truly bank the unbanked? One idea that is bouncing in my head is a sort of agency model where agents can actually have the internet set up in physical premises and they can be the ones to set up crypto-wallets and withdraw/deposit fiat. The unbanked users can simply continue to use SMS based systems to operate their crypto-wallets.

Only problem is that they wouldn't necessarily truly own their coins - most users on HN may care about that but these folks wouldn't. If it works, it works and that's all they'd care about.

I just thought about the idea now when I read your comment so it isn't necessarily refined.

Re: Digital coins may be on the verge of going mainstream

#170

Post by Eridrus »

mrb wrote: post #30
CPLX wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with Google your Mom can find out when the store is open and where it is. Facebook lets grandparents see photos of grandchildren. Reading a blog replaces reading the gossip column in the daily paper. You could finally buy plane tickets without driving somewhere. And so on. The early web was really fucking useful as it started to mature. It solved a lot of real problems. What is cryptocurrency going to help these…

" What is cryptocurrency going to help these people do that they can't do already today? " International payments confirmed and spendable in minutes not days. Escaping inflation in Venezuela/Argentina/whoeverisnext. Sending remittance to family overseas without 10% wasted in fees. Receiving monetary donations for organizations that might be victim of oppressive censorship. Participating in modern e-commerce for the u…

> Sending remittance to family overseas without 10% wasted in fees.

I just looked at TransferWise, and it seems like the rate is about 0.7-2.5% depending on the pair of currencies.

I found this post of transferring 1000 USD -> EUR via BTC which claimed to have done so for $14: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/25583/does-it-ma...

TransferWise asks $10 for this. So in the same ballpark, but not necessarily any better.

> Escaping inflation in Venezuela/Argentina/whoeverisnext.

Who is going to sell you Bitcoins for Venezuelan Bolivars? The only people who want Bolivars are those who need it to purchase goods in Venezuela, and are only going to buy enough Bolivar for their spending in the next week tops because keeping any more in Bolivar would be crazy. It also assumes that the people with capital (eg Bitcoin) haven't already just fled the country, e.g. https://www.economist.com/news/americas/21721944-latin-ameri...

And how do they get Bitcoin anyway? I mean, you could use your subsidised electricity to mine it, but then you get arrested because it's sort of obvious: http://reason.com/blog/2017/02/03/venezuela-surbitcoin-arres...

> Allowing merchants to save 2% in credit card fees (which doubles their profit margin if it was 2% to begin with).

Well that would be cool, but Bitcoin has it's own fees, and an unacceptably long delay for any IRL purchases and inherent currency risk on every transaction.

>> Allowing merchants to sell in industries prone to credit card fraud. Etc.

WRT fraud, merchants certainly want transactions to be irreversible, but since we're all terrible at security, being able to reverse transactions is quite useful for dealing with criminals who would try and steal your money.

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